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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Daring Bakers Challenge November - Cannoli

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes

Cannoli are known as Italian-American pastries, although the origin of cannoli dates back to Sicily, specifically Palermo, where it was prepared during Carnevale season, and according to lore, as a symbol of fertility. The cannoli is a fried, tube-shaped pastry shell (usually containing wine) filled with a creamy amalgamation of sweetened ricotta cheese, chocolate, candied fruit or zest, and sometimes nuts. Although not traditional, mascarpone cheese is also widely used, and in fact, makes for an even creamier filling when substituted for part of the ricotta, or by itself. However, cannoli can also be filled with pastry creams, mousses, whipped cream, ice cream etc. You could also add your choice of herbs, zests or spices to the dough, if desired. Marsala is the traditional wine used in cannoli dough, but any red or white wine will work fine, as it’s not only added for flavor or color, but to relax the gluten in the dough since it can be a stiff dough to work with.

I did a much simpler verson then the one listed, check her blog for the origional. I've had a recipe for these pasted in my book for 3 years now, so I went with that one.

5 comments:

Love your recipe very interesting so much butter, eggs and wine!!!! And it seems that it worked just fine and that filling with peel, cherries,pistachios, chocolate sounds delicious. OBTW what is credo? wikipedia says it is cedar wood!!! Nice photos also. Cheers from Audax in Sydney.

Gorgeous cannoli..all the fruit, zest etc make them look like little jewels imbedded in the luscious cream! Amazing job, and thanks for deep frying with me this month! I have no doubt your dough was a lot easier to roll, since it contains egg yolks!